Angel and Dark
by Moonstar's Fire
Summary: Kagome, a young vampire, finds a fallen angel named Inuyasha, what is she going to do? I've gotten lazy, I don't want to do anymore! Besides, it has a pretty good ending..... maybe sometime I'll get up the urge to do it....


Angel and Dark - The Curtain

"If this existence were a play, some romantic, decadent drama, I do not think the curtain would rise on the day of my birth, nor even on the day of my death. No, my play, my drama, my life, started long after my death. On a night in Hyde Park, when an angel fell, a burning bright star, to land at my feet…"

The woman stood in the damp grass of four a.m., and stared, ageless, impassive face not betraying anything that she might have felt at such a moment. Close at hand, and yet miles away, the clock rang four times and London, for the better part, slept. The woman's name was Kagome, and she cherished the hour of four am... Almost everything was silent, almost everything slept, save for the birds and the bats and the creatures of the night. Creatures like her. She would leave her flat every night and hunt through the streets of her city, always ending up in Hyde Park at four in the morning. Like clockwork, though this night was different than the rest.

There was an angel at her feet.

He had fallen there, screaming out of the sky like Icarus falling to earth, a dying star; a broken, twisted bird. He bounced. Twice, and then lay still.

One might say that pity touched her heart as she beheld the angel. Others might question her even having a heart for pity to touch. Nonetheless, Kagome felt something as she stared, observing the angel for what he was.

He was beautiful, that much was certain. Even torn and battered and smoking, his skin glowed with a fading golden hue. He had long hair that Kagome would have guessed to be golden as well, save for at the moment it was singed, dirty and matted with blood. He had features the likes of which Caravaggio and Michelangelo would have sold their souls to see or paint. He was as perfect as only an immortal could be, and it looked to Kagome as if he were also quite dead.

The woman, the monster, knelt by the fallen creature, the heady scent of his blood awakening the familiar demon in her. The blood made her head spin and dark fantasies whirl through her head. Carefully, curiously, giddily, she touched his cold face, her skin prickling.

"I wonder what it's like to drink the blood of an angel," she mused with a Cheshire Cat smile. "Do you think it's the sort of thing God frowns down upon? Even the fallen ones, those who are no longer worthy of the light?"

She laughed and ran her tongue along her fangs. She picked up the angel's head, cradling it against her knees almost as a lover would.

"And what of drinking the blood of a dead angel?" she asked the corpse with singed wings. "What an insult to you, one so high and loved, to serve as dinner for a monster, for a creature of the dark."

She let the angel fall from her arms, face-down in the dewy grass as he had first been.

"Then again," she muttered darkly. "Feeding on something as holy as you might just kill me."

She got up abruptly, aware of the callousness of her words and actions.

"I'll leave you know, it pains me to touch you, even your corpse. Perhaps some scientist or side-show will find you and put your beautiful remains on display."

She turned and took a step to leave.

The angel made a broken, gasping sound.

Kagome felt something again. That twitch, that catch, which prevented her from abandoning him.

The angel moaned, piteously reaching a hand out to her.

Kagome was annoyed at not knowing why she could not leave, or even will herself to move. Now it was clear that the creature at her feet was not dead, and now she found it harder still to turn away.

"What am I supposed to do?" she snapped. "Nurse you back to health like your mommy, then send you back to God?"

"Help...me..." croaked the angel.

"Do you have any idea what I am?" shouted Kagome, her voice shrill, constricted.

"...help...me..." he repeated.

"You disgust me!" the vampire shrieked almost childishly. "I hate you! You pitiful thing!"

She found herself sinking to her knees, trembling with anger and fear.

"You remind me...of...everything...I hate..." she whispered, her vision blurring with tears.

Yet despite the pain she felt when she touched him, she found herself going to angel's side, draping him in her coat and picking him up. He was light as a feather, wasted away. And then she ran, moving faster than a mortal eye could see; carrying the naked angel back to her home, for reasons she did not even comprehend.

"Tell me," she asked the unconscious man as she lay him down in her bed, in her flat that smelled of blood and death and lady's perfume. "Why am I doing this for you, Creature of God?"

She could not answer.

If I were him, where would I go? What would I do? What could I do? He has nothing, not even his ridiculous God. He has me, a monster, a darkling, and a thing he hates. But he has me. And I have him. I wonder which of us will kill the other first...

The angel moaned in his sleep, tugging at the twitch in the vampire's insides. He lay still in her feather bed, in the flat with boarded windows, with his suffering face lit by dozens of dancing candle flames. Kagome sat on the end of the bed, holding a basket of gauze and bandages tight to her body.

"Why?" she repeated for the hundredth time. "What drove me to bring you back here, to bandage your wounds?"

The woman looked at the angel's face and chuckled.

"I suppose it is vulgar curiosity. I've never seen an angel before, let alone had one so close, and so vulnerable. When you wake up, you will undoubtedly try to kill me."

She leaned close, until she was within inches of the angel's perfect, pained face. Her black curls skimmed his nose and forehead, catching in his eyelashes. The vampire smiled like the predator she was.

"And I think the real reason I brought you here," she whispered, brushing her fingers over the thick bandage that covered a gash on the angel's chest. "Is that I want to see which of the two of us will win the fight. I want you to get better, to grow stronger...maybe then I can make my peace with all that I hate..."

The candlelight flickered and Kagome produced a pocket-watch from her coat.

"Almost morning," she told the sleeping angel. "Time for me to go to bed."

She glanced down once more at the beautiful creature God had thrown to her feet and laughed coldly.

"I don't think I even need to tie you up to prevent you from killing me during the day. You are such a pitiful thing, so weak. Perhaps I was wrong to fear God's mighty power all this time..."

The vampire smiled again, though it was a far more human and almost attractive smile. She stood, and turned to a Persian recliner, casually draping her long black coat over a chair. She took a spare quilt from the foot of the angel's bed and draped it over the end of the sofa. Kagome padded over to her chest of drawers and changed into a simple nightshift, heedless of the angel in her bed. Yawning, though only by die-hard living habit, she crossed back over to the sofa and lay down under the quilt.

"God's mighty power indeed," she scoffed as she closed her eyes.

Outside the flat with boarded windows there stood a young woman in a light blue coat. She had a pleasant, round face fraught with freckles and set with warm brown eyes. She had hair the color of wheat and that reached down to the middle of her back. She looked perfectly normal.

The young woman stared up at the boarded windows as if she could see what was going on inside. There was affection in her eyes, and something akin to longing, and if one looked very closely, trepidation could also be read there.

The woman dressed in the blue coat and white dress sighed slightly before peace returned to her still face. She turned at the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk. Out of the shadows there strode a tall, thirty-something man. He wore an expensive grey business suit with a black silk shirt and dark red tie. He had a certain rakish air about him, but one that often shifted to an almost tangible melancholy, as was the same for the young woman. His blond hair was ashen with the peppering of grey hairs that intertwined with the gold, and his face was hard-edged, though not old or wrinkled. He had a smile on his face that barely touched his eyes.

Though he did genuinely smile when he caught the young woman's eye. She returned his smile with one her own, and for a moment, the two looked actually happy.

"When will it begin?" asked the thirty-something man.

The young woman laughed like the bells of heaven.

"My darling, it's already begun!"

Then for some reason, one's attention was diverted elsewhere, to a car speeding by on a nearby road, or to the sound of two tomcats fighting in an alley. When one looked back at the sidewalk below the flat with boarded windows, one noticed that the two people were no longer there.

Night, thought the angel when he opened his eyes.

No, not night. There are no stars, no sky. And there is so much pain... why? This place smells of blood...could it possibly be mine?

The angel tried to sit but fell back to the pillows with a surge of pain.

A cracked sigh escaped his lips, sole witness to his suffering. He could feel bandages taped to his skin; he could smell the acrid smell of his own burnt feathers.

He could smell the smoke of fragrant candles, the perfume of a lady and, ever so faintly, that of death.

He could hear nothing, save for the rhythmic whirr of an overhead fan. Then, there it was! The padded thump of a foot on a carpet.

The angel strained to face the direction that the sound had come from.

A woman's low, husky chuckle.

More pain blossomed in the angel's body, his time behind his eyes, as a candle was lit close by his head. He heard the foot fall on the other side of the room, almost instantly afterwards, and saw another candle flicker on, then another, until he dimly made out the form of the woman in whose bed he laid. She lit more candles as she approached.

She was very pretty, for a human. Tall and slim, she had thick hair the color of night, and eyes the color of dawn, grey and clear. Her skin was surprisingly pale for someone with such dark hair, but her lips were almost blood-red...or were they indeed? She wore a light nightshift of reddish-black satin, covering enough to borderline decent, and had obviously just woken up.

The angel locked eyes with his savior and she smiled.

There was something unsettling in her smile. It was enticing, like that of a demon; feral as a demon's as well.

The angel felt suddenly uneasy, and his fear gave him strength. He sat up in the bed, feathers from his tattered wings falling left and right.

"Who are you?" he asked a hint of suspicion in his voice.

The woman smiled broader and knelt by him on the soft mattress.

The angel was disturbed. There was something terribly familiar, and terribly dangerous about this young mortal that came so close.

"I'm the one who saved your life."

The angel was caught off balance, for perhaps the first time in his existence.

"I...I know."

"What, no thanks?" the woman mocked.

The angel felt the danger stronger.

"I'm not certain I should," he told her truthfully, putting his fears and regrets into words for the first time.

The woman sat down, closer still.

"Who are you?" demanded the angel.

"You don't know?" she laughed. "Look closer, you silly angel! Look me with your true eyes, and then you'll see who saved your life."

Then it struck the angel that she was right. He had been watching her with mortal eyes. The angel suddenly realized the scope of what had happened. He was banished, and he had fallen; to that there were consequences. He was now neither angel nor man. He would lose his wings, and his angel's invulnerable body. He would remain more than a man, but less than an angel, and it would be exacting to perform any task that had once been second-nature to him. Like seeing with Second-sight.

"So this is what it means to fall..." he whispered. The woman beside him, the woman that smelled of vanilla and roses and blood, smiled.

The angel closed his eyes and concentrated.

When he opened them, all was the as it had been, but all had changed. He looked into the beautiful woman's face and saw her true nature. Her skin was smooth and white as a sheet, lifeless. Her fingernails were in fact claws, her eyes grayish gems that radiated in the dim light. Her hair stayed black as pitch, though when she smiled, she grew fangs.

The angel almost fainted from the exhaustion of his endeavor. Would have, had it not been for the terror, and the anger that awoke within him at the woman's sight.

"So now you see," chuckled the woman, the monster.

"Vampire!" screamed the angel, and, finding yet more hidden strength, flung himself at the creature.

Kagome was more than mildly surprised when the broken angel let off a howl and lunged, but she took it all in stride. After all, he had almost died, and most likely not put up much of a fight. But she had been right. He did try to kill her.

With a shrug, she prepared to strike him when she felt his hands close around her neck. Her eyes widened at the shock of pain that came with his touch.

How is this possible? He is so weak he isn't even strangling me...not that that would do any good...why is this hurting so terribly?

Kagome coughed and choked on the agony of the touch. A thousand fiery needles striking her flesh, worming their way to her core.

This must be an angel's anger...that is the pain...of a holy thing…

"I...hate...you... hypocrite," she forced the words out of her burning throat. "Is...This...God's...mercy?"

The angel looked taken aback, and the pain lessened, though Kagome knew it would soon kill her just as easily.

"I...saved...you," she raged at the wounded man. "Is...This...how...a...angel...repays...a debt? Or...is...this...why you were...banished, you traitorous...angel..."

The pain was becoming unbearable; the legion of burning darts creeping closer and closer to her heart, to her death. She gagged on the torment, feeling her eyes roll back in her head.

What a fool you were, Kagome, to pit yourself against God... So will end a pointless existence... You were born a fool, you died a fool, you lived the countless nights as a fool and now you will die again, a fool.

The vampire, cursing the angel a thousand times, felt her eyes close, tears of blood running down her cheeks. But suddenly the pain stopped. Kagome looked up in one brief instant to see the torn expression on her pet angel's face. Then she shuddered as her body recalled the unbearable pain, and fell away into darkness as it shut off her mind to heal.

The angel felt the vampire go limp in his arms, and he held her for a moment, feeling the burn as her bloody tears touched him. Then his own aches caught up with him and forced him back down to the mattress in a cloud of singed feathers. He did not even have the strength to pull up the sheets or to move the vampire's body from atop his own. They both simply lay, motionless, on the vampire's bed; one unconscious, the other soon to be. Her skin was cool upon his, her hair tickling his bare skin and the satin of her shift soft. He was aware of the yards of gauze and bandage that she had taped onto him. He was aware or his mortal body, its lungs, its heart, its veins and cuts and bruises. He was in a mortal body made immortal, he was just like her.

The angel began to wonder a great many things as he sunk into the murk of unconsciousness. Like why something as evil as a vampire would have saved his life, and what had possessed him to spare hers. He could easily have blamed it on the bone-deep exhaustion he felt, but he wouldn't have been able to fool himself into thinking it was true. He knew he had given up; he had stopped himself from killing a thing of the dark, when it was his duty... Or at least, had been his duty. He wondered if it was because he had fallen that he had spared her, but he was asleep before he could figure out whether or not he was lying to himself once again.

Kagome woke up with her cheek against the angel's bandaged chest. His skin felt warm, and brought pain where it touched hers. She was lying sprawled almost on top of him, with one leg dangling off the side of the mattress, the other across the sheets atop the angel's legs. Kagome was hungry, and felt like she had been hit by a truck. The smell of the angel's blood flowing in his veins made her dead heart beat quicker. She raised a heavy hand from off the mattress and ran it along the vein in the angel's neck.

With difficulty, she reminded herself just what the angel was and what he had just done to her, yanking her hand away from his throat. She stood and looked at her almost-captive. He slept like a baby again, but he would be much stronger the next time he woke up. Kagome, heedless of him once again, changed into a black sweater and jeans and threw on her coat. It was getting hard to control her appetite; the aftermath of the angel escapade she had just been put through had taken it out on her. She checked her pocket-watch. Not quite twenty after eight. She still had much time. At the door, she stopped and turned back to the angel, who slept like the dead in her feather bed. She wondered if she ought to tie him up this time.

"Too late now," she muttered, in response to her own question, and slipped out to hunt.

Jasper Copperfield stood on a crate on a street corner. It was near midnight, by the fingers of Big Ben, and where in God's name was Kagome? Jasper shrugged and brought his violin up to his shoulder, feeling the smoothness under his fingers and chin, and through the heavy fabric of his coat. A vampire had acute senses, after all. He took the bow delicately between his fingers, the unmarred fingers of a child; the fingers that had practiced more than the greatest masters of the art. If Kagome decided too be an hour late, it was her business. He would simply start his street-corner show over again. Lord knew that the passing masses loved it well enough, and at midnight, there were still plenty of masses passing by to make his show worthwhile. He was just about to take the bow to the strings when he saw Kagome in the crowd. She stood out quite sufficiently, near six feet tall among a busload of Japanese tourists. He would have started playing anyway, to spite her, had it not been for the look in her eyes. Jasper had known Kagome for over a century and a half of unlife, and never had he seen her look so haunted.

She looked at him as she approached, but there was such distance in those pale eyes that Jasper had the impression she was staring right through him, staring all the way to the bloody antipodes was more like it. Time stretched between them and he wondered what could possibly be the matter with her. Her pale cheeks were slightly flushed, so he knew she wasn't starving... but she looked like she had been through the nine rings of Hell.

"Oil," he called out to her, letting his instrument down off his shoulder. "You look like you're still dreaming, Mum!"

Kagome's eyes snapped into focus on Jasper's freckled face and she flashed a brief smile, absently tousling the other vampire's red hair.

The child-shaped monster turned serious as he sneaked a glance of second sight at his friend.

"Kagome..." he started, gaping."What's happened to you? Your...your throat...I can see the lines almost to your heart!"

The intensity in Jasper's green eyes jarred with his round, young-looking face. It was a look of cold anger too old even for the most bitter of grown man.

"Who did this?" he asked sharply, his ire seeping into his high voice.

Kagome looked at him tiredly from under sooty lashes.

"Jasper," she began in a throaty sigh. "Let's go somewhere else..."

Halfway across the world, where it was seven p.m., a young girl thrashes in her sleep, having the same dream she always does. Danielle Whitmore, Dani for her friends, awakes sweating, brown hair plastered to her fifteen-year-old forehead. Her chest heaves under her summer dress; she curls her legs under her chin and holds her knees for comfort. She sleeps so often nowadays, and at the strangest of hours. And she always has the same troubling dream, the same nightmare. She slides her glasses back onto her nose and sighs. Am I going crazy? She wonders. There is no easy answer to that question, for as her eyes drift to the foot of her bed, she sees it. The same shimmering apparition that inhabited her dreams. The figure of a young girl, perhaps ten years old, Asian features deep dark eyes full of sadness. She is there in the room with her, but she is not at the same time. How could it be that Dani can see her, and see through her at the same time?

Help me, says the ghost into her mind. Help me, Danielle.

Danielle screams.

"An angel?" Jasper voice went up an octave as he pronounced the word.

"Hush," Kagome admonished her eyes now awake and alert, roving. "Yes, an angel. I swear. He could be nothing else."

"An angel," the musician repeated numbly. "An angel...in your house..."

"Sleeping in my bed at this very moment," muttered Kagome darkly.

Jasper looked at her with his age-old eyes in his child's face and said quite levelly, "Kagome Madison, are you quite insane?"

The raven-haired woman looked at him almost despairingly.

"I don't know, Jasper, I really don't know."

"You are a vampire," he said, voice lowering to the lowest of whispers. Not that it mattered. The street that the pair strolled down was completely empty. Not even rats scurried there. "You are a vampire that is keeping an angel in your flat. That qualifies as insane in my books. Do you have a death wish after all this time in the mortal's world? You are, after all, older than me."

"Don't mock me, boy. I don't want to die just yet."

"Then there's only one thing to do. Kill it while it can't defend itself."

"I don't think I can."

"Then let me."

"I shan't."

Silence grew taut between them.

"You'd like it too much, you psychopathic little boy. Besides, God would hate you for it."

Jasper though it a pale imitation of Kagome's usual humor.

"Seems we have a problem then."

The boy suddenly noticed the shopping bag in his companion's hands.

"What is that, Kagome?" he asked suspiciously, hoping it wasn't what he thought.

The woman looked vague, disconnected and slightly abashed as she answered.

"Clothes."

"For the angel."

Statement, not question.

Silence from Kagome.

"I don't bloody believe it. You really have lost your freaking mind, woman!"

Still silence.

Jasper muttered a string of words only a pirate of yore would have had the gall to say aloud.

"That was colorful," Kagome remarked flatly.

"You are 'colorful'!" shouted Jasper. "Bloody unbelievable...taking care of a bloody angel!"

"He's mine," she mumbled.

"And you're mine!" retorted Jasper. His eyes widened even as he spoke; Kagome's as well.

For a long time, neither spoke.

It was Jasper who broke the silence, in a humble voice.

"Kagome, I've known you for a very long time, and we've done some fun and crazy things since that silly cow sat on the throne...but this is pure madness. If the angel doesn't kill you, then the other angels will, or the other vampires, or the bloody pope, or...or...the devil himself might come after you! Finding a dying angel at your feet is not something to be taken lightly. And your problem is that you take everything too bloody lightly. This'll get you into trouble, mark my words. I've always stood beside you in the past, but this is too much. If you're half the friend to yourself as I am to you, then you'll toss those clothes into a trash bin, and toss your 'pet' in after."

Kagome stood very still and very silent.

Jasper looked up at her.

"Still won't, eh?"

"There is a twitch..." she started quietly."A twitch in me that kept me from leaving him in Hyde Park and that will keep me from killing or leaving him now."

There was another stretch of silence.

"So that is how it is."

"So it seems."

"Very well," said Jasper brusquely, picking up his violin case. "If you are still alive in a week come visit me at nine o'clock. I'm doing a concert in the park. Then we'll see about the rest."

The red-haired boy turned on the heel of his boot, the tails of his small tuxedo flapping behind him, and stalked away into the night.

Kagome looked at her feet for a long time, several emotions warring on her face. She then clutched the bag closer to her chest and started walking back towards her home.

The angel was still unconscious as she closed the door behind her and stepped into the room. She dropped the bag on the floor, and her purse and coat on top of it. She felt better after having drunk her fill, but her mind was no less of a muddle. She walked into the bathroom and took out her bag of gauze and bandages. If there was one thing she would never run out of, it was bandages and medicine. She had needed them frequently in the past. She hadn't expected that she'd need so many once more.

The angel seemed to be sleeping fitfully when Kagome approached the bed. It could have been the pain that had that effect, for indeed, there seemed to be quite enough of that. There were singed feathers all around her bed and in it as well. Her angel was losing them at a phenomenal rate. His wings, which had been at least six feet long each the first time the vampire had seen them, were now mere stumps of loose down. There were no bones, she noticed, in this angel's wing. How odd. Must be God's mighty power that kept them intact.

The angel's eyes snapped open when Kagome put a fresh bandage over a gash in his cheek. The vampire saw a candle-flame of hatred in those eyes, but the angel remained quiet as she worked.

The silence was thick as she cleaned his wounds and replaced the bandages on all the angel's injuries. With the detachment of a doctor, Kagome yanked back the sheets covering the rest of the angel's body and began to tend to the deep cuts on his legs.

"Good," she said simply as she worked. "You haven't yet been infected by that annoying mortal fixation with covering one's self out of modesty."

The angel made a dry, gasping sound that could have been interpreted as a chuckle.

"Modesty? What's that? Angel's don't have bodies like humans; they don't have anything to cover!"

Kagome glanced up from her ministrations and looked at the angel's relatively calm face. It was probably the longest sentence he had spoken to her since he had awoken. She answered, in an equally flat tone,

"But now you do."

"Indeed," said the angel weakly, lifting his head to look down at himself. "I seem to be a man."

"Indeed."

"I once wondered, as an angel, which I was closer to being, a man or a woman."

Kagome looked at him quizzically.

"Angels don't have sexes," he said. "It's only when they come to earth that they are given mortal bodies."

"Or when they fall here."

The angel sighed deeply. Kagome got the feeling that she had hurt him deeply.

"Or when they fall."

Silence grew heavy again as the vampire returned to cleaning the gouges in his knees. When she had reached his feet, and was putting a splint onto a badly swollen ankle, he spoke again: hushed, wondering, bitter.

"Why?"

Kagome's hands stopped their methodical cleaning and taping for a fraction of a second, but said nothing and did not look up from the angel's foot.

"Why what?" she asked in a somewhat strained voice.

"Why save me?"

"You asked."

"I asked?"

"When you were on the ground and I thought you were dead, you asked for help."

"Did I?"

"Would I have saved you otherwise?"

"Would any vampire have saved me?" retorted the angel. "Even had I asked?"

Kagome looked up, and into the angel's blue eyes, meeting them with a queer mix of bitterness, regret and puzzlement.

"I don't think any vampire would have saved you, no."

The angel was silent a moment, looking up at the lazy ceiling fan. His breathing was slow and measured, but Kagome could feel the tension in the muscles under her hands.

"So why did you, vampire? Why in God's name did you save me?"

"Kagome," she said bluntly. "And I do nothing in God's name."

"That's not an answer."

"I haven't a better one for you."

"Oh," said the angel, sounding rather disappointed.

Kagome cleaned his wounds in silence.

The angel watched the dark-haired woman apply gauze to his legs and splint the sprain in his foot. She worked quickly, quietly. The angel sighed. Everything he had ever known had been turned upside down. There was no light here, no brightness or warmth. There was dark, candles, a ceiling fan and drafts. , He was cold.

"I'm cold," he muttered. He had never been cold before, and hadn't thought that he ever would be.

"Just a moment," replied the vampire, Kagome, with her voice like marble or ebony: polished and hard. She finished tending to his feet and brought the covers back up to his shoulders, hiding his new-found human body. The angel sunk back into the pillows, a few more feathers floating away from him.

No more wings, he thought. No more flying under the sun in that special place that was my home. No more joy; no more. I've fallen, and all has changed.

"I'm nothing anymore," he whispered.

The vampire, who had gotten up to fetch another blanket, half-turned.

"Did you say something?" she asked politely.

The angel said nothing. He examined the back of his hand, flexing his fingers and staring curiously at the blood seeping out from a small scratch on his thumb. It was all so very different. He was one of them now. One of the millions of humans his kind protected. His thoughts flickered back to another night, another woman...not much more than a girl in fact, but old beyond her years. A spasm of pain tore a deep cough out of his lungs. He had never coughed before, nor had he ever been injured, or bleeding. She had bled, and coughed, in the end. He had done it all for her. Had she been worth getting thrown out of heaven, thrown from everything he knew? Had one silly, mortal soul been a fair price to pay. The angel suddenly felt ashamed, though he was not sure is was because of his thoughts or his actions. He took a shuddering breath. It seemed to the angel that he was losing control of his frail shell. He was suddenly having trouble breathing regularly, and he felt a peculiar knot in his throat. And then his eyes were prickling, and it was as if there was something in his mortal cage of flesh that was trying to get out.

Kagome came over to his side and placed an extra blanket over him. The angel grabbed her wrist as she retreated. He felt a terrible twitch when she recoiled from his touch. The thing inside him was trying harder to get out, and his vision blurred with hot water.

"Why?" was all he managed to say, his voice cracking, tight and constricted. Then the thing that fought to escape was set free. The angel, pulling the vampire close, buried his face in the folds of her clothes, and collapsed into helpless, wrenching sobs.

Kagome, eyes stinging, looked away from the angel, stroking his hair as he cried on her lap.

"What a nightmare," she muttered. Considered from the angel's point of view, Kagome could understand. He had lost everything, a sum that could not even be lost by the inhabitants of the mortal world. He had lost his heaven, his splendid sanctuary. He had lost his wings and angel's body, the symbol of his perfection. He had lost his friends, his brothers, those like him. He had lost his duty, which is the very purpose of an angel's existence. He had reason to cry, Kagome knew it. But why couldn't she bear to look at him?

The vampire swallowed and turned her eyes down. The angel sobbed on her knees, a truly pitiful sight. His burnt feathers came loose in clumps and several undoubtedly cracked ribs made for a sickening catch to every shuddering breath. There was the twitch again, like a wire, between Kagome and the angel, set by some invisible hand. What had happened with the order of the world? What chaos had brought them to this point? The angel and her.

Kagome wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to cry along with the angel.

There were still enough women hidden in that monster's shell. The sight of an angel weeping could make rocks cry.

She wanted to escape, flee from this lost creature of heaven and the feelings he flung in her face. It was to be human again, to feel, to cry.

"I don't want to…" she whispered."Please, stop…"

But the angel could not hear her, nor could he stop his sobs. He held her to him, even being what he was, and knowing what she was. The vampire could hardly imagine his torment. But she couldn't escape looking at it. A tear pearled in the corner of her eye, quickly blinked away. She refused sympathy, weakness.

But she would not harm him. Not now at least.

All the sadness of the world couldn't compare to the heartbreak of watching an angel cry wretched, desperate sobs.

The sound filled the thick silence, like the smell of ashes filled the air. Feathers, burnt, floated up and around, churned up by the ceiling fan, and a sudden draft that put out most of the candles. Kagome stroked the angel's golden hair, and the golden skin, its glow fading fast, of his neck.

There was no hunger, thankfully, but the vampire's thoughts, upon the touch of her fingers to that skin, still jumped to the blood pulsing underneath.

It was dangerous. She knew. Dangerous for her, dangerous for him. Jasper was right. This was not to be taken lightly. Kagome was afraid. She had an angel. He had a vampire. The heavens would not be pleased, nor would her kind. It was dangerous. Dangerous.

Dangerous, she knew. Now more than ever. The angel's tears were soaking through her clothes, burning her cold skin. The wire was there, a shackle, a bond. Not to be broken easily, if to be broken at all.

But what could she do?

It was done, the dice cast. Kagome hoped for sevens. It was all she could do. She couldn't predict what would go on next. She didn't know what would happen tomorrow. Or if she would live to go visit Jasper in the park next week. All she could do was stay in her flat with boarded windows; tend to the broken angel and hope.

Hope.

The storm would pass, like all the others…

She hoped.

The angel fell asleep, exhausted by tears. Kagome looked at the time. Only three in the morning. A queer thought occurred to her.

She pried the angel's arms from around her, and lay his head down on the pillows. She put out the candles and slid out into the night. As soon as she had passed the doors to her building, she ran. Fast as she could, until her feet barely touched the ground. She could cross a busy street in one stride, easily clearing the tops of the cars. She ran so fast she could not be seen.

And then she was in Hyde Park again.

It hadn't taken five minutes.

It wasn't her fetish hour of four a.m., but time, and routine, were of little importance to her now. Purposefully, she made her way to 'her' corner of the park. There were people there now, she noticed, irked.

There had never been people in her corner of the park before, and certainly not at this hour. Rumor of the past night's fireworks had most likely drawn their attention, Kagome thought. Now they had come to gawk at the scorch marks on the ground.

Tourists. The vampire felt a sudden swoop of anger towards the humans.

They are fascinated by death and suffering, the fools. I can show them death and suffering, though I doubt that they'd enjoy theirs as much as a stranger's. Idiots. Why are humans such idiots? They love the things they fear… They feast on the deaths of their kind, but flee their own inevitable fate…

Kagome glanced at the burnt ground where she had stood a night ago and sighed, another futile human gesture that a century of death had not cured her of.

…Fleeing fate…is that what I am doing?

Standing in the wan light of a neon lamppost nearby was a dark-haired young man in a pristine white business suit. He was staring absent-mindedly at the stars, a faraway half-smile on his face. Distance was in his dark eyes, and wisdom beyond his few years, perhaps even beyond the comprehension of man. He smiled a familiar, friendly smile into the night, just as footsteps sounded on the path.

A jet-haired woman, sultry, perhaps thirty years old was approaching. She wore a tight, revealing red dress and high-heeled black boots. She wore no coat in the cool night air, though it did not seem to bother her.

"Hello darling," she said in a low, enticing voice. "You wanted to see me?"

The young man smiled.

"Yes…I wanted to know what you thought about all this."

The woman put a finger to her full, red-lacquered lips and made a thoughtful face.

"Seriously, please!" the man in the suit chuckled.

The woman laughed.

"What, are you having second thoughts? You? You know you're not allowed doubts, my friend!"

"I know, I know," he replied softly. "But…I don't know… I just wanted to know your thoughts on this whole thing."

"Well," began the woman. "I think it'll make a whole bunch of people very angry… But you know what a really think. You think it too. This is a good idea. It might do some good. Not that I am supposed to like that… Besides, it'll be fun to watch!"

"Fun to watch? You're horrible, you know?"

"I know, I know. You made me that way, love!"

Suddenly, and inexplicably, the lamp over the couple head began to flicker, and was soon put out. The place where the conversation was being held was cast into the pitch darkness of the night, and when the lamp lit up anew, there was no longer anyone to be seen there.


End file.
